Child Service Agency Will Move Community Services For Children Wants To Buy Two Buildings On The Allentown State Hospital Campus.

October 29, 1999|by DARYL NERL, The Morning Call

Community Services for Children Inc., a service provider for low-income families with children and child-care professionals, is planning to move from its Bethlehem headquarters into two buildings on Allentown State Hospital's campus.

The Allentown Planning Commission on Thursday conditionally approved a plan to subdivide nearly 9 acres near Oswego Street that the state plans to sell to Community Services.

In moving, the agency, which directly or indirectly serves about 15,000 children in eastern Pennsylvania, plans to expand its services, adding a program that will help severely abused and neglected children.

"As important as expanding services is improving the services we are currently providing," Elsbeth Haymon, the agency's director of development, said Thursday.

In the next year, the private nonprofit agency will begin a drive to help pay for the renovations needed to establish its new home. The goal may be about $2.5 million, Haymon said.

The acreage, on the west side of the hospital, includes three unused buildings, a playground and green space.

The agency is best known for providing Head Start preschool education to children of low-income families. Head Start classrooms are scattered in schools, churches and other buildings throughout the Lehigh Valley, serving 1,200 children and their families annually.

Community Services also provides adult education: teachesing parenting skills through Head Start and providing training and technical support for child-care professionals, who serve 10,000 children annually in 15 counties.

It also administers Lehigh County's subsidized day care program, which cares for more than 1,000 children. Through its TOT-INFO telephone hotline, it provides information to 3,300 parents on qualified child-care providers.

Most of the 250 people the agency employs work off-site, Haymon said. The agency's annual budget is $16 million.

The land and buildings can be conveyed to Community Services only by the state Legislature. But the Legislature can act only after the subdivision plan has municipal approval, which is why Community Services came before the Planning Commission.

The agency will pay the state "substantial consideration" for the property, but the amount has not been determined, said Malcolm J. Gross, the agency's attorney.

The Planning Commission's approval has two conditions.

First, Community Services must obtain its own hookups to city water and sewer systems. The buildings are linked to the utilities through the hookup that serves the state hospital. Second, the agency must obtain an easement to continue using the state hospital complex's internal system of roads.

For more than 10 years, Community Services has had its headquarters in the Lafayette Street School building in Bethlehem. But the agency's lease with the Bethlehem Area School District will expire in August 2001, and the district does not wish to renew the lease, Haymon said.

She described the move as a positive one for several reasons.

"The site is very pretty," she said. "We'd like to be able to offer more outdoor activities."

The move will also help Community Services do a number of things it cannot do at its current home, Haymon said. For example, one of the agency's plans is to build multipurpose rooms with kitchens to teach nutritional cooking to parents, she said.

The agency also plans to build a modern Head Start demonstration classroom that will enable teachers learning the program to observe a class and remain unseen, Haymon said.

Finally, the agency plans to add a program called Childhaven, which will provide therapeutic child care and day treatment to children 6 and younger who have been severely abused or neglected.

The program is being designed by Community Services with the Children & Youth agencies in Lehigh and Northampton counties, Haymon said. Initially, Community Services plans to provide care to about 10 children, she said.

Community Services chose to expand to care for abused children because the need is unmet, Haymon said.